Impound yards are used to store vehicles that have been towed away by private companies, at the request of law enforcement, at the request of a car dealer, at the request of finance companies, etc.
Such impound yards charge a daily fee for storing vehicles that have been towed to the impound yard. In many instances, an owner of a vehicle, a car dealer, a finance company is not aware that the vehicle has been towed to the impound lot. As a result such parties may end up paying substantial daily impound lot fees over multiple days.
There are been attempts to solve some of the problems with goefencing. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,538,667 that issued to Koen teaches “A wireless device for facilitating for GPS-based asset tracking via a wireless communications network and a centralized management system. The wireless device includes dynamically configurable event profiles which allow the wireless device to be dynamically reconfigured and to perform certain actions based on a dynamically configurable combination of received events.”
U.S. Pat. No. 7,940,173, that issued to Koen teaches “A wireless device for facilitating for GPS-based asset tracking via a wireless communications network and a centralized management system. The wireless device includes dynamically configurable event profiles which allow the wireless device to be dynamically reconfigured and to perform certain actions based on a dynamically configurable combination of received events.”
U.S. Pat. No. 8,766,791, that issued to Koen et. al teaches “A wireless device for facilitating GPS-based asset tracking. The wireless device includes dynamically configurable event profiles which allow the wireless device to be dynamically reconfigured and to perform certain actions based on a dynamically configurable combination of received events. In addition, geofences with inherent aspects are used to trigger certain actions of the wireless device based on classes and attributes that define the inherent aspect.”
U.S. Pat. No. 8,810,454 that issued to Cosman teaches “Embodiments enable geofencing applications and beacon watch lists. A computing device with at least a first processor and a second processor identifies a set of beacons associated with a geofence. The first processor consumes less power when operating than the second processor. The first processor is provided with the identified set of beacons. In beacon watch list embodiments, the first processor detects one or more beacons proximate to the computing device, compares the detected beacons with the provided set of beacons to determine whether the computing device is within the geofence, and updates a location status based on the comparison. In tiered geofencing implementations, the computing device switches among positioning modalities based on a distance from the computing device to the geofence to save power.”
However, none of these problems solve of the problems associated with goefencing. Thus, it is desirable to solve some of the problems associated with knowing when vehicles are towed to impound yards.